The Only 2 Food Events You Must Know About This Week

Not that there's anything wrong with a great family-style supper or winemaker dinner, but let's face it, they're so commonplace these days they don't do much to catch the eye of your average food writer suffering from press release fatigue. My hat goes off, therefore, to the refreshing and creative thinking behind the following two food events. Their existence is like a cool, crisp glass of naturally-brewed ginger ale the morning after a few too many glasses of that lush Columbia Valley red.

Gospel Brunch presented by Where Ya At Matt at Hilliard's Beer,Sunday, Feb. 5 Rescheduled for February 26.I hereby nominate Matt Lewis for a public service award for bringing this lively New Orleans tradition to our little dark, dank corner of the world. Not one, but two gospel choirs are lined up to rouse you out of Sleepytown Sunday morning, and I almost get chills just thinking about how their sound will fill up the sprawling warehouse space of Hilliard's Ballard brewery.

Inspired by the famous Gospel Brunch served up every Sunday at the House of Blues (not to mention many of Louisiana's other Creole restaurants), the New Orleans native says he wanted to share the (kid friendly!) tradition with Seattle in a secular setting. But heck, whether your religion is the gospel, heavenly food or a Belgian saison poured at the perfect temperature, I have a feeling Lewis is already preaching to the converted on this one. $40, tickets at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2229

Sorry folks, nothing on the menu here. But this really caught my eye because it gets to the heart of why I write about restaurants, and why I believe people rabidly follow chefs around this town like they're friggin' rock stars. Yes, the food is part of it, but to me restaurants and bars are so important to us because these are the places where we fall in love, fall out of love, celebrate our proud moments and drown the miseries of the not-so-proud ones we'd rather forget.

This event, hosted by the Seattle Architecture Foundation at Town Hall, features Chad Dale of evo Properties, which developed Ballard's Kolstrand Building (Staple & Fancy, The Walrus and the Carpenter), as well as the Revel/Quoin space in Fremont; Ethan Stowell (of all things Ethan Stowell), and Deming Maclise and James Weimann, who opened Bastille, Macleod's Scottish Pub most recently, and Poquitos, which owes its existence to the discovery of an old neon sign in a salvage shop.